The BBC has said there are no plans to axe the Thought for The day slot from its flagship Radio 4 Today news programme, after caustic criticism of the slot made by the programme’s presenters.
In a Radio Times interview John Humphreys said that the slot was often “deeply, deeply boring” and complained about “fascinating” items being cut short because “we’re now going to hear somebody tell us that Jesus was really nice”. Describing three minutes of uninterrupted religion as “inappropriate”, he added: “We have Hindus of course, and we have the occasional Muslim, the occasional Jew, but by and large it’s Christian. Why?”
Presenter Justin Webb said the “Thoughts” were “all roughly the same: If everyone was nicer to everyone else, it would be fine”.
However a senior spokesman told The Tablet: “Thought for the Day is a longstanding part of the Today schedule and an important part of Today’s religious content – it will continue to be so. It features speakers from the world’s major faith traditions and regularly provokes a range of different views.”
Asked whether it was appropriate for presenters to comment in this way on the content of the Today programme, the spokesman said it was clear the presenters were offering personal reflections, and none actually suggested it should be removed from the schedule.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby defended Thought for The Day against the withering remarks from the presenters, by referencing an article in the Guardian by Giles Fraser, a Thought for the Day contributor and priest-in-charge at St Mary’s Newington in south London. “Another typically excellent comment by Giles", said Archbishop Welby in a tweet.
Fraser’s comments were trenchant. “This is not about individual presenters. A culture of sniggering contempt towards religion is endemic within the BBC,” he claimed. “And one acceptable way of demonstrating this is to slag off Thought for the Day.”
He did not refrain from condemning the presenters’ interventions. “Imagine reading out your Thought for the Day knowing that all this sneering and smirking is going on right in front of you,” he said. But he went on to make a sweeping criticism of wider BBC attitudes to religion. “Sometimes the slot is good; sometimes it is not so good,” he admitted. “But it has become a totem of the BBC’s attitude towards faith generally – that it is an embarrassing relative it has had to invite to the party … To the overpaid panjandrums of the BBC, religion is for the little people, for the stupid and the gullible. And it’s easy to play this for laughs to a gallery of those who have read a few chapters of the Selfish Gene [by atheist Richard Dawkins] and think this has turned them into philosophical giants.”
“But the news isn’t godless,” Fraser pointed out. “Just the people who report on it…The vast majority of the people on this planet believe in some sort of God [so] you cannot understand the world unless you understand something about the way that faith functions in the lives of its adherents.”
Catherine Pepinster, another Thought for the Day presenter and former editor of The Tablet, said the judgement that the slot was boring was “ridiculously sweeping”. “Sometimes the Today programme is boring, but that doesn't mean it is all of the time,” she said. “The same is true of Thought for The Day.”
“I noted that the presenters suggested it should be more provocative,” she continued, “but if, say, there was a Thought for the Day that suggested the wealthy, such as BBC stars, will never get to heaven because of their wealth, or that homosexuality was completely wrong, or abortion an evil, there would be uproar. Because Thought for The Day presenters are in a privileged position, with no instant response from someone with an alternative view, we are expected to offer some balance, rather than provocation.”
A former producer on the Today Programme, Ted Harrison, says that Thought for the Day brings a sense of perspective sometimes lacking in news reporting.
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